U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and two of her Republican colleagues on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee continue the committee’s GOP-led investigation into the adequacy of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) oversight of NIH-funded research that may pose significant biosafety or biosecurity risks.
Rep. McMorris Rodgers, who chairs the E&C committee, and U.S. Reps. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) and Brett Guthrie (R-KY) requested additional information in the investigation from Dr. Lawrence Tabak, the senior official who is performing the duties of NIH director.
The members’ request follows an April 27 House E&C Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing entitled “Biosafety and Risky Research: Examining if Science is Outpacing Policy and Safety.”
“We still do not know how the COVID-19 pandemic started. However, more information has heightened our suspicions that the origin of the pandemic was linked to a lab incident,” Rep. McMorris Rodgers said during the hearing. “It raises the importance of our work to oversee biosafety of risky research.”
“Unfortunately, in our pursuit of solutions, the conduct of some public health officials and the loss of trust in our public health institutions hampered our response,” she said.
The congresswoman said that both NIH and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have not been open and honest in discussing the issue and “have persisted in foot-dragging, stonewalling, or flat-out refusing to engage on legitimate questions.”
“Today, the NIH still won’t provide meaningful information or straight answers to the Committee about how the P3CO framework governing risky research was developed, and who at the NIH was responsible for developing the framework,” Rep. McMorris Rodgers said.
The lawmakers’ May 1 letter to Dr. Tabak seeks additional information from NIH beyond what was provided during the hearing and what was not provided in response to a January 2022 letter the committee members sent him requesting a list of all proposed, approved, or ongoing research work that NIH is funding in the area of coronaviruses (especially SARS CoV-2), or viruses related to SARS, MERS, or SARS CoV-2.
“In its written response, NIH specifically ignored the question: ‘Does the research involve virus manipulation, passaging of a virus, genetically modified animals, or making any mutations to a virus?’” according to their letter.
At the same time, Rep. McMorris Rodgers and her colleagues want more details from NIH, including: a list of all NIH intramural and extramural coronavirus research studies involving virus manipulation, passaging of a virus, genetically modified animals, or making any mutations to a virus; whether NIH laboratories have introduced any mutations or insertions of genes associated with pathogenesis or transmission into SARS CoV2; and if NIH labs have introduced mutations or insertions of genes that encode for resistance to medical countermeasures, or increase pathogenesis or transmission in influenza virus or other respiratory viruses or human pathogens.
This information, they wrote, will “put these studies in context” and allow them to be able to assess “the adequacy of the NIH’s oversight of potential risks in such experiments,” according to their letter, which seeks Tabak’s responses by May 15.